New year, new CRM: 6 Reasons to choose HubSpot in 2020

As another year draws to a close, we’re all reflecting on the results of our sales and marketing efforts and beginning to plan our strategies for 2020. For many businesses, this means evaluating your current CRM: has it performed as you’d hoped? Are your results mirroring your efforts?

If the answer to either of these questions is no, it could be time for a new CRM. Luckily, we have a recommendation: HubSpot. Here are the top six reasons why we think you should consider HubSpot as your CRM of choice in 2020.

1. Start by using HubSpot CRM free and scale as you grow

You heard right - HubSpot CRM is free. We know that’s hard to believe, but it’s true.

There are many pieces of software out there that claim to be “free”, but in reality they require a purchase if you want anything beyond limited functionality - HubSpot CRM doesn’t do this. In fact, the core CRM functionality of HubSpot is free for everyone to use. 

Trust us: there’s no catch. It’s 100% free — simple as that. Of course you get more features in paid-for versions, but the free CRM still offers an impressive abundance of great tools for you to try.

Once you start using HubSpot CRM, you’ll be able to use a wide variety of marketing, sales, customer service, and contact management tools for free, with the option to progress to paid versions of HubSpot if you wish. This means that you can begin with free HubSpot CRM and upgrade as you become accustomed to the software and as your business expands - HubSpot is fully scalable from small start-ups to huge enterprises.

So, what have you got to lose? To see how it all works,

2. HubSpot CRM allows you to automate administrative tasks

Everyone hates admin - it’s a fact, and it’s especially true of salespeople, who on average spend 17% of their day on data entry and often, they hate every second of it. That’s 17% of their day that could be better spent elsewhere - preferably on actually selling your product or service. 

HubSpot CRM has a solution: automation. In order to save time, generate more leads, and close deals faster, here are four ways you can use HubSpot CRM to automate your sales efforts besides automating data entry.

Deal creation

Using workflows in the HubSpot CRM, you can automate the process of creating a new deal and reduce the amount of time your sales representatives spend doing this manually. It also saves the time spent creating new deals every time a new lead meets the qualification criteria.

Task creation

Once you have created a deal, you can then set up tasks to be created as your leads move through each stage of the buyer’s journey, and these can be assigned to a specific sales rep. This allows you to automate follow-up tasks, as well as reminders for actions that need to be done within a certain timeframe - so your sales team never miss a task again. 

Lead rotation 

As your company begins to grow, assigning leads manually to your salespeople is no longer feasible. Automating this process saves precious time and bandwidth, allowing sales managers to stay focused on their team’s performance and salespeople to focus on selling.

Email sequences 

With automated email sequences, you can queue a series of emails and follow-up tasks to automatically send to your prospects and leads as they progress through their buyers journey. You can even use personalisation tokens that pull information from your customer database, and use email tracking to see which emails are performing the best.

With HubSpot CRM, you equip your sales team with the necessary tools to close more deals with less administrative work, and remove friction from the sales process.

3. Easily track and respond to customer communications

The HubSpot CRM tracks customer communications automatically, which provides your business with valuable insights into the kind of people engaging with your company, and makes it easier to determine when you should contact them. While the free HubSpot CRM only offers website tracking on the first 7 days of contact activity, with the paid-for Marketing Hub you will be able to see all tracked data, without limits.

You can even connect with visitors in real time using live chat and chatbots, which gives you a better chance at converting them into paying customers.

4. HubSpot CRM has seamless social media integration

HubSpot CRM offers integration with all major social networks, where you can create and publish social posts, and track their engagement. Using the social media tool, you can either  manually publish content directly to social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram or Twitter) or connect your accounts to your blog and share new content automatically, immediately after publishing.

You can even schedule content for specific times, as the system recommends the optimum times to post, so you can get your content viewed at exactly the right time. 

5. HubSpot CRM aligns sales with marketing

Sales and marketing work best when they work together, and HubSpot makes this happen. The free CRM combined with the sales, marketing and services tools makes for an excellent all-in-one solution, especially in terms of marketing automation.

It enables easy and seamless transition between each of your departments, be it sales, marketing or services. This makes managing the lifecycle of your contacts throughout their buyer’s journey much easier - from their first encounter on your website to their final purchase. 

However, HubSpot doesn’t stop there. On top of all its current features, HubSpot is always working on new ideas and developing existing tools. In fact, in 2020, HubSpot plans to allow its users to attribute revenue to each of their contacts’ ‘touch points’ - not just the first and last pages they see. This allows you to see exactly which of your marketing and sales efforts are working effectively, allowing you to always be improving.

6. HubSpot CRM is easy to use

Most CRM systems don’t work particularly well for the average user, which leads to low adoption rates and frustrated employees. HubSpot, however, is different - it has user friendliness at its core, being much easier to use and navigate than its rival systems. You don’t need any prior coding or development knowledge to use HubSpot, which means each member of your team can get comfortable using it quickly and easily. 

The new year is a great time to consider change, and researching into a new CRM is a good place to start. Here at Axon Garside, it's no secret that we are strong advocates for HubSpot; we use it every day and have seen its potential for success first-hand across all the businesses we work with. However, we realise that you want to know the cost before you commit to implementation, which is why we’re offering a free HubSpot pricing guide below: